


Evasive Maneuvers

by Cerusee



Series: Batfam Week 2018 [4]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Alfred swoops, Bruce hovers, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Illness, Jason and Bruce really love each other, Jason is miserable, Tim is a nosy bitch, amoxicillin, interesting medical facts I discovered researching for this fic, just the way we like him, so help him, sometimes that makes things difficult for them, what would Bruce do without Alfred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 04:27:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15549603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerusee/pseuds/Cerusee
Summary: A routine inventory of the medical supplies in one of Jason’s safehouses leads to a startling and unwelcome discovery for Bruce and Alfred.





	Evasive Maneuvers

**Author's Note:**

> For Batfam Week 2018. Prompt: “Hurt/Comfort”

Tim stiffened at the sound of beeping. _Crap_ , someone had engaged the security system.

Damian’s head swerved around. “Drake!” he hissed. “Someone is here!

“Be cool,” Tim muttered, quietly shutting a drawer and moving back towards the window they’d compromised coming in. “We can still get out before…” 

But then the door swung open, a light was flicked on, and there was six foot three of Tim’s least favorite person, glaring at them.

“What the fuck are you doing in my safehouse?” Jason said harshly, relocking the front door behind him, a plastic bag dangling from his free hand.

Damian rose to the occasion, standing up straight and proud and full of bullshit. “You should invest in reusable shopping bags, Todd,” Damian informed him. “Plastic is terrible for the environment.”

“They make some great lightweight rayon bags these days,” Tim added.

Jason didn’t even blink. “Plastic is a tool, just like you two. And rayon is reusable, but it’s also _breathable_ ,” Jason said, pulling a crinkly paper bag out of the crinkly plastic bag, and dropping the paper bag on the table beside the door, while slumping back against the wall. “Whereas a plastic bag is a _weapon_.” Jason waved it around his pinky, and then let it drift to the floor. “For instance, I could use it to suffocate, oh, say, a home intruder.”

“Look, okay, we’re just here doing inventory,” Tim said, truthfully. “And by the way, you’re running low on amoxicillin.”

“I’m aware.” Jason glanced over at the paper bag sitting on the table. “You can mark me down as stocked up.” 

Tim couldn’t help notice that Jason was sounding a little scratchy, and looking kind of pale and greenish, to boot. “Coming down with something, Jason?”

“Strep throat,” Jason said. “I’d keep your distance.”

That was exactly what Tim was thinking. “A heads-up would have been nice,” he said sourly. “I wouldn’t have come if I’d known you were infectious.”

“Didn’t know you jackasses were going to _be_ here,” Jason said, irritably. “This is off-schedule. You’re a week early. And why’s it you two? You can’t stand each other.”

“There was an incident,” Tim said, stiffly.

“Drake broke a laptop,” Damian said.

“Damian tried to stab me with a katana and I used the nearest thing on hand to defend myself,” Tim corrected. “Unfortunately, it turned out Dick was using that one for case files, so…”

“Father and Richard are in the Cave, attempting to repair it,” Damian said. “And I was merely testing your reflexes, which are execrable.” 

Tim rolled his eyes.

“So you’re both in the doghouse, and this is a make-work punishment disguised as a team bonding exercise,” Jason said, mouth twisting with amusement. He looked like he thought that was funny.

 _Enjoy your strep_ , Tim thought, viciously.

“Hurry up and get out,” Jason said, rubbing hard at a nasty-looking rash running from the low, sloping neckline of his Henley shirt to under his jaw. “I’m tired and I’m sick and I want to go to bed.” 

“Nobody’s stopping you,” Tim said. 

Jason fixed him with a look. 

“Fine. We’re almost done. Although shouldn’t you be at the Manor, if you’re sick?” Tim made a mental note to find somewhere else to stay, if Jason decided to do that.

“It’s just strep,” Jason said, with the slightest shrug of a shoulder. What an asshole. “I’ve had it before. And you know how B gets.”

Yes, he did. Bruce’s anxiety levels ratcheted up to 11 any time he thought Jason was hurt, often far out of proportion to the actual injury. Any harm to any member of his family or friends distressed Bruce, but Tim had seen Bruce, with nineteen stitches in his torso from a fresh and not insignificant knife wound, try to persuade Jason to use him as a human crutch after Jason had sprained his ankle. (Admittedly, Jason had done so in the alarming context of having been kicked off a rooftop during a fight and not quite sticking the landing on the dumpster below. But still. He’d been fine.)

“So kindly keep your yaps shut, both of you; I don’t need Bruce mother-henning me because I have a sore throat.”

“Not a problem,” Damian said crisply. “You can keep your germs to yourself, and Father and the rest of us will remain focused on more important matters.”

Jason flipped him the bird.

***

Later, back at the Cave, Tim took the precaution of taking a shower and disinfecting his suit—and prompting Damian to do the same—in case he’d picked up any streptococcus bacteria from Jason’s safehouse. More for his own sake than Damian’s, admittedly. Not that he wished strep throat on Damian—well, okay, a _little_ , except that it would just make him cranky, and that never did anything to improve Tim’s life—but Tim was the one with the compromised immune system, so Tim was the one who had to stay vigilant about possible sources of infection.

He sat down to do some research on the incubation period of strep, just in case. Two to five days, apparently. And… _huh_. It didn’t normally last longer than ten days, once the symptoms kicked in.

He didn’t want to go back down to the Cave—Bruce and Dick had thus far been unsuccessful in retrieving Dick’s files, and Bruce was still pissy about it—so he went and knocked on Damian’s door. 

“Hey, he said. “When was the last time anybody saw Jason in the field?” Jason didn’t always bother coordinating with them, so Tim was frequently fuzzy on his whereabouts. As long as he wasn’t raising hell somewhere or interfering with one of Tim’s own cases, Tim wasn’t overly worried about it.

Damian didn’t bother to look up from his sketchpad. “Why do you care?”

“Just something that’s bugging me.”

Damian paused, put down his pencil, and absently scratched the chin of Alfred the cat, who was sitting on the desk, next to him. The cat purred. “It’s been at least two weeks. Maybe longer. You should consult Oracle or Father for a more accurate estimate.”

“I don’t want to ask Bruce,” Tim said. “We said we wouldn’t rat him out, and if I ask Bruce, he’s going to want to know why, and then he’s going to get worried.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” Damian said. “It’s obnoxious, how Father fusses over him.”

Apparently Tim wasn’t the only one who felt insecure witnessing Jason get special treatment, even if Dick and Cass seemed unbothered by it. Rationally, Tim understood that seeing Jason sick or injured was a trigger for Bruce’s PTSD—Tim knew grief all too well, had lost people himself, but even so, he couldn’t begin to imagine what it was like to dig the corpse of your son out of the rubble of a wrecked warehouse. Still, the selfish, emotional side of him resented it enormously, and remained stubbornly convinced on some level that it was because Bruce valued Jason more than the rest of them, even after all the awful things Jason had done to them.

“It’s just...strep’s only supposed to last like, ten days, tops. Also, going by that inventory, he’s got to be at least on his second round of antibiotics.”

“You think Todd is more seriously ill than he let on?”

“Yeah, maybe.” Would Jason be dumb enough to try and ride out a serious illness on his own, despite having access to a support network?

What was he thinking, of course he would. Jason was such an attention whore that you’d think he’d revel in the drama it caused when Bruce worried excessively over him, but for some reason, he...didn’t. Actively went out of his way to avoid Bruce where he could, in fact, when he was hurt. Not the rest of them necessarily, but definitely Bruce.

“I suppose we’ll have to tell Father after all,” Damian said, frowning.

“Or we could split the difference,” Tim said, “and just tell Alfred.”

***

Jason was distantly aware that he hadn’t eaten in hours, and knew he ought to get up and microwave some soup or something. No matter how much he slept, though, he couldn’t shake this fatigue—just going out to pick up more penicillin had damn near wiped him out—and the thought of food nearly triggered the nausea that had been plaguing him since he woke up one night two and a half weeks ago with a pounding headache, muscle aches, and a sickeningly familiar sore throat. He’d only had one active case, so he called in a favor and handed it off to Batgirl, stocked up on canned soup and tea, and settled into this safehouse to wait it out.

 _This is the worst strep I’ve ever had._ Twice as a kid, once before Bruce, once after. The first time had, oddly enough, been the easiest—Catherine had caught it right away, and this was at a time when there was enough money for the doctor and the antibiotics. The second time was worse because Jason had become accustomed to exerting himself a lot harder, at pushing through discomfort, and it had taken a few days before Bruce realized he was lagging, and figured out why. There had been a serious talk after that about not concealing injuries or symptoms of illness, and Jason had taken it to heart.

For awhile, anyway. Bruce’d probably be pissed, if he knew the extent to which Jason had lapsed on that front. Which was why the demonic duo had better not tell him.

He’d never had this fucking hell-rash before, though, Jason thought, rubbing it with back of his hand and trying resist the impulse the scratch. And the strep had never lasted this long. He wondered if the Pit had fucked up his immune system somehow, or changed the way his body reacted to antibiotics. _Hooray, good thought._

The doorbell rang. Shit. That wasn’t good. Even if was just a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses, it still meant getting up and answering the door. Maybe if he just stayed here and didn’t make any noise, whoever it was would go away.

The doorbell rang again, followed by a sharp rapping. 

No such luck.

Jason reluctantly dragged himself off of the bed, and staggered from the apartment’s sole bedroom to the door. He looked through the peephole and sighed.

“Which one of the little shits squealed?” he said, opening the door to let Alfred in.

“Language, Master Jason,” Alfred said, shutting the door behind him. Without so much as a by-your-leave, he put both hands on Jason’s throat, feeling under his jaw, an action that would have provoked in him immediate defensive maneuvers against literally any other person in the world save Doc Thompkins. “I thought as much. Swollen glands.” He pulled down Jason’s jaw for a look at his throat, producing a small flashlight, and _tsked_ at what he saw. “Fetch your shoes and a coat, Master Jason; we’re going back to the Manor for a blood test.”

“No we’re not,” Jason said automatically.

“I’ve never known whether your contrary nature is yours indeed, or just bad habits you picked up from your father. Pray tell, did that rash appear after you began taking amoxicillin?”

“Uh,” Jason said, trying to think about the order in which symptoms appeared, and now wishing that he’d kept a log. “I think so. Yeah.”

“We need to do a blood test to confirm it, but based on your symptoms and the presumed length of your illness, I suspect that you have misdiagnosed yourself. Am I correct in thinking that you did indeed diagnose yourself, instead of going to a doctor and having throat culture done?”

“I know what strep looks and feels like, Alf,” Jason said defensively. “I’ve had it twice before.”

“Unfortunately, there are other diseases with similar symptoms to strep, Master Jason. The mostly likely culprit is mononucleosis.”

“Mono?” Shit. Mono was a virus, not a bacterial infection. No wonder the penicillin wasn’t helping. _Shit_. Mono...mono could last for _months_. He could be in this miserable state for weeks to come. Jason scrunched his eyes closed and bit back a silent wail of despair at the thought.

“Indeed. And if that is the case, not only will the amoxicillin you’ve been dosing yourself with have no impact on the virus—”

“Thanks, I do know how viruses work—”

“—but it’s likely the cause of your rash.”

Again, shit. Well, there was an object lesson against self-diagnosing. If Doc Thompkins ever caught wind of this, Jason was never gonna live it down. “Fine,” he said, shoving his bare feet into a pair of old sneakers and grabbing a jacket off the wall. “I will come _for the test_. And then I’m coming back here. This is a perfectly good safehouse, and might I add, it is _peaceful and quiet_ , both things I hear are recommended for recovering patients.”

Alfred raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

***

“Just as I thought,” Alfred told him, a few hours later, scanning the test results. One of the nice things about having your own private lab in your basement was a _much_ faster turnaround on these things. Jason was still hoping to get out of there before Bruce got back from work. (Also a bonus: no hassle with the insurance.) “Infectious mononucleosis. When did you first develop symptoms?”

“A little over two weeks ago,” Jason said, opening his eyes. He’d been dozing on a medbay bed while Alfred ran the blood sample.

“What besides the sore throat and swollen glands?”

“Headache,” Jason admitted. “Muscle cramps. Nausea. Fatigue.”

Alfred made a sympathetic noise. “You may be in for a long haul, Master Jason. Mononucleosis can linger for up to eight weeks.”

Jason threw an arm over his face. “Kill me.”

“I shall do no such thing,” Alfred told him. “I will, however, open up one of the spare bedrooms upstairs. I can’t cure you, but I can at least make you more comfortable.”

“That’s a terrible idea. Timmy’s immunocompromised; he shouldn’t be in the same house as me.”

“Perhaps it’s escaped your notice, young sir, but it is a very large house, hence a spare bedroom with more distance from his room than yours. And mononucleosis is far less contagious than group A Streptococcus. If you will refrain from licking other people’s silverware, I imagine we can keep the pestilence from spreading.”

Jason wouldn’t be surprised if Tim opted to move out for the duration anyway, if he did agree to this; Tim was (justifiably) paranoid about infection. Losing your spleen did that to a guy, apparently. Jason didn’t feel as bad about the thought as he might, though; Tim had plenty of safehouses of his own, and a pretty sweet set-up in San Francisco. Jason knew _that_ from personal experience. And Jason was the sick one, so if one of them was alone in a safe house and one of them was being waited on hand and foot by a butler-cum-home-nurse, it wasn’t unreasonable that Jason be the latter, was it? It was such a tempting prospect, to just let Alfred take care of him when he felt like death warmed over, but…

Six weeks, sick in a house with Bruce constantly hanging around. Jason couldn’t face it. He shook his hand without removing his arm. “I can’t, Alfred.”

“Whyever not?”

“You know why. Bruce.”

Alfred made a distressed sound. “I was very much of the understanding that you were on good terms. Did something happen between you that you have _both_ elected to keep from the rest of us?”

“No, it’s not like that. It’s just...I can’t stand how he gets whenever I so much as stub my toe. The fussing. My god, Alfred, the hovering.”

“He worries about you.”

“I _know_.”

“Can you blame him?” Alfred asked gently. “Losing you was...he’ll never not fear it happening again, Master Jason. He loves you so deeply. He always has.”

“That’s the thing, Alfred!” Jason said, miserably. “The way he looks at me—it _hurts_ , because I can see how much _he’s_ hurting! I hate seeing that, I hate doing that to him. I can’t be around him when he’s like that. It’s easier to stay away.” Honestly, the last thing he needed when he was injured was the constant sense of guilt and anxiety that Bruce’s intense concern for him engendered in him.

“Master Jason,” Alfred said after a pause. “Are you saying that you’ve been avoiding coming to the Cave for medical treatment habitually, to avoid Master Bruce when you’re unwell?”

“Um,” Jason said. “Not all the time.” _Only when I can get away with it._

“Oh good Lord,” Alfred said, with palpable disgust. “Not an ounce of sense in this whole damned family.”

Jason winced.

“You’re staying until you’re well, and that’s settled. I promise not to let your father at you until I’ve had a talk with him, but this behavior has to stop _immediately_ , Master Jason. I will not permit you to risk your health by failing to seek adequate medical care.”

“I can take care of myself, Alfie.”

Alfred prodded one of Jason’s swollen glands with a finger, and Jason yelped. “Not nearly as well as you think you can, sir.”

Jason grumbled, but all the arguing had sapped the strength he’d gotten from the nap and the broth Alfred had pushed on him earlier, and he suddenly lost the willpower to keep going. “Fucking fine,” he muttered. “I’ll stay. For now.”

Alfred was pleased; Jason could tell by Alfred’s willingness to overlook the profanity.

“I’m just gonna close my eyes for a bit,” he said, and drifted off to sleep.

***

Once Alfred had a spare bedroom, situated well away from the rest of the household, open and dust-free, Alfred returned to the Cave to rouse Master Jason and get him settled upstairs. Then back to the Cave again, to make sure the bed Jason had used was stripped and the medbay sterilized again. The risk of contagion for any of them was almost non-existent, absent contact with Master Jason’s saliva while he was ill, but no sense in taking unnecessary risks. He made a mental note to give Master Timothy some warning, in case he preferred to decamp.

What to do about Master Jason’s dilemma, though…

***

Jason was awoken by a light knock on the door.

“Jay?” a voice called through the closed door. “Is it all right if I come in?”

Jason cracked an eye open and briefly considered saying no. “Did you talk to Alfred?” he called back.

“Yes,” Bruce said, sounding a mix of amused and chagrined. “He told me what you said. We had a discussion about it.”

“Then yes, you can come in,” Jason said, giving in the inevitable and pushing himself up on the bed. He fumbled for a light, wondering what time it was, how long he’d slept. The room was fitted with blackout curtains, and the clock on the bedside table was analog, not digital. There had been an awkward, uncomfortable moment, a while back—Alfred had been trying to persuade Jason to stay in his old room, asking what he could do to make Jason more comfortable there. _Get rid of that goddamn LED clock!_ , he’d blurted without meaning to, and then clamped his mouth shut, knowing he couldn’t bear to explain why. But the horror that crossed Alfred’s face for just a moment, before he smoothed it away, told Jason that he wouldn’t have to.

It had never come up again, but Alfred had clearly not forgotten.

Bruce closed the door behind him, and pulled up a chair by the bed. “How are you feeling, Jay?”

“Like complete shit,” Jason said, honestly.

“I suppose it goes without saying that I’m absolutely furious to find out you’ve been concealing injuries from me,” Bruce said, although his voice was calm. “I thought we hashed this out when you were fourteen.”

“Yeah, well,” Jason said. “Lot’s changed since then. And you can’t yell at me right now, I’m too sick.”

“I’m not going to yell.”

“You already yelled, didn’t you?”

“Did a few rounds with a sandbag,” Bruce admitted, flexing his fingers. “You’ve been asleep most of the day - Alfred was the one checking up on you, not me, for the record - so I had some time to...process my reaction. And then Alfred sat me down and made me practice my words. He was very, very clear that I was to handle this constructively,” he said, sounding rueful.

Must be the reason that this conversation hadn’t gone nuclear after “hello”. Jason studied Bruce’s face, his posture. There was some tension there, but less than he was expecting. Which, all things considered was just...a relief.

“I’m not happy with you about this, Jason, don’t get me wrong. But the person I’m most angry with here is myself. I _never_ meant to let my own anxiety drive you away like this.” Bruce visibly swallowed and closed his eyes for a moment. “I’m not blind, you know. I was...aware that my reacting disproportionately to minor injuries made you uncomfortable. But it was just so hard to control those feelings, and I told myself it was worth getting on your nerves if it meant calming mine. That was selfish of me. I didn’t realize…” He trailed off. “Alfred said that you said it _hurt_.”

“Seeing you get scared for me, yeah,” Jason said, and it wasn’t just the strep that made his throat feel raw. “The moment I really got how much it hurt you when I died, Bruce - I - I had a breakdown.”

“What?” Bruce looked alarmed. Which, okay, this was a prime example of why this was so hard for Jason, but he was gonna give Bruce a pass on this one. “You never told me that.”

Jason turned his head away, unable to look Bruce in the eyes for this. “It took such a long time for me to accept that you still loved me. That you _always_ had, that I _had_ mattered to you. And when I did, and I started thinking about how it must have felt for you to lose me - realizing how much pain you must have been in, I couldn’t _stand it_. The thought of you hurting so much. And because of _me_. I was the source of that sorrow.” His voice was shaking by the of speech, and his eyes were hot and wet. He wiped at them with the back of an unsteady hand, and Bruce pressed a tissue into it. “I had to...take some time after that. Before I could be around you again.”

“I’m sorry,” Bruce said gently. “I’m sorry I’ve made it hard for you.”

“I just don’t want you to have to feel that way because of me,” Jason said. “Especially for small things that don’t matter. I’d tell myself, why put him through that when it’s really not a big deal and I can take care of this myself? I wasn’t avoiding you because you were getting on my nerves, Bruce. I just didn’t want to hurt you more than I already have.”

“Oh Jay-lad,” Bruce said, in a tender voice. “That’s the price of having children. I learned that lesson hard, with you, but I understand it now. The possibility of pain...it’s worth it. I accept it. If I couldn’t, it really would have all stopped with you - that’s how I felt back then; I never wanted to love someone that much again. I couldn’t begin to really let people into my life again until I accepted that loving you was worth the cost.”

Jason’s eyes were burning again, and he blinked rapidly and unsuccessfully to avoid more tears. “How can we fix this?” he whispered. “Is there any way to make this easier?”

Bruce reached over and brushed the tears off Jason’s cheeks. “Alfred suggested a compromise. You stop avoiding the Cave for treatment when you need it; I agree to abide by Alfred’s judgment about what I need to know or to be concerned about, and work on keeping my anxieties in check. Since my own judgment about you is...shall we say, clouded.”

“That could work,” Jason said neutrally.

“You have to promise me - both of us - that you’ll do this in good faith, and be completely honest with him. I need to be able to trust you, or this isn’t going to work.”

Jason exhaled, shakily. “I can do that. I promise. Radical transparency with my PCP.”

That put a smile on Bruce’s face. He tousled Jason’s hair. “Good talk, son. Do you want me to back off and give some space, now?”

“No,” Jason said impulsively. “Why don’t you stick around for a little bit. I haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Two and a half weeks,” Bruce said dryly. “I admit, I was hoping you’d say that.” He pulled a slim paperback out of his trouser pocket, and Jason caught the name on the spine.

“You’re so predictable,” Jason said, laughing. “Every time I get bashed up, you guys break out the Kipling.”

“It’s _Kim_ this time,” Bruce informed him. “We never did this one.” He opened the book. “ _‘He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher—the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum…’_ ”

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently my new tradition for Batfam week is to bash Jason up for Hurt/Comfort and end on Kipling.


End file.
